A new strategy to ‘end this pandemic for good’

Vaccines have allowed us to turn the tide against covid, rupturing the link between cases and deaths.

But there are fears their potency may be waning, and countries have begun scrambling to order booster jabs.

The UK recently ordered 35 million Pfizer jabs, bringing the total number of jabs to over 500 million doses, enough for every UK adult to have had almost 10.

Yet with dozens of countries yet to even vaccinate a fraction of their population, is this the right strategy to end the pandemic?

“We were inclined to give the benefit of the doubt for a very long time,” said Jenny Ottenhoff, senior policy director for global health at the ONE Campaign.

“But at this point, we need to pick a new strategy. The one that we’ve been doing has not been working.”

“Right now only 1% of people in low income countries have received a single dose of the vaccine.”

Ottenhoff maintained that rather than look within our own countries, it’s time for leaders to start thinking about how we can end the pandemic worldwide.

“We are making decisions right now that are going to put us in a cycle of uncertainty and booster doses indefinitely,” she said.